"Heavens! What is that thing?"
Habal stared in disbelief at what had suddenly appeared, his mouth hanging half-open.
Purple-black flames erupted from Isaac just as Baku was about to invade his brain. The flames surged and rapidly swelled, yet gave off no heat at all.
Instead, they evoked a sense of cold, deathly silence, and terror.
This was not a mental attack or oppressive aura.
It was an instinct rooted in a living creature's primordial genes.
Those primordial genes were terrified, afraid, trembling.
It felt as though a single glance at that being would cause their genes to immediately collapse and disintegrate.
As though the being itself was something indescribable, something they could not look upon directly.
The purple-black flames flickered wildly, as though something was gestating within them.
Everyone on the battlefield stopped moving. Not just the Pioneer Corps and the Blood Abyss Legion—even the Hell Agony Ascetics halted.
They involuntarily turned toward the flames, and an inexplicable thought arose in their minds.
Worship.
Worship its birth. Worship its gestation.
An impulse seized them all: to turn their own bodies and lives into kindling, igniting the first flame of its birth.
Thud—
The Hell Agony Ascetics dropped to their knees in unison, stretching their hands forward and prostrating themselves.
These troop creatures, devoid of independent thought, chose to obey their innermost instincts completely.
The soldiers of the Pioneer Corps and the warriors of the Blood Abyss Legion, however, immediately recognized that something was wrong with them and chose to resist.
The results of their training at Everfrost Lake showed themselves at that moment.
Every warrior standing there had endured at least thirty minutes of Everfrost Lake's freezing trial. Quite a few had even unlocked the achievement for lasting sixty minutes.
Their minds and wills were already like steel. Their